A recession by any other name...

I was watching CNN the other day, and was surprised at how optimistic the coverage was. A correspondent was being interviewed about the price of gas, because the national average had just dropped below $2.00 a gallon. She raved that--when adjusted for inflation--that's how much we were paying for gas in the 1960s. She then extolled the viewers to go have fun, fun, fun in the T-Birds. The American public must be loving this drop in gas prices, she said, especially since the DOW Jones average was up 150 pts at that point. One phrase she said stuck out to me: "we earned it," referring to America as a whole deserving this lightening of the burden.

However, the burden was only lightened slightly. Although gas prices are down now, they will go back up, and however pleasant the DOW rise is, the nature of the market is that it will drop again. The silver lining of the recession is that it forces people to be more responsible, since many have been living beyond their means. This type of media coverage paints an overly rosy picture of the situation: times are lean, so fiscal responsibility is a good thing; we can't just point to a couple of positive blips on the national radar to celebrate and ignore the overwhelming burdens that dominate the larger picture. By calling for a celebration in our T-Birds, the correspondent made us feel better, but with unrepresentative 'evidence.' The media--especially television--play a tremendously large role in shaping how we interpret the world; if they say everything's alright, then people may be less conscientious in their behavior. It seems apparent that the cable news media were simply trying to make people feel good, to help them avoid experiencing anything unpleasant.No one wants their comfortable way of life disturbed. So let's go out and have a celebratory drive, because as the CNN corespondent said, "we earned it."

Liberal Media Bias?

It is often lamented that the mainstream media (MSM) has a liberal bias. Recently, examples from the coverage of the presidential campaigns were cited as proof: the generous (in amount and tone) coverage of Obama, and the less abundant and less favorable coverage of McCain and Palin. Some believers have put their suspicions into cartoon form:

While individual anchors and correspondants have their own opinions--whether overt or tacit--they are subjugated to the corporate beliefs. Here's a third cartoon to end with:

CNN thinks Palin spoof is funny

Wolf Blitzer appreciates Tina Fey's spoof of Sarah Palin:



This is not the only time that SNL lifted exact phrases from the politicians for the comedians' dialog. Other Sarah Palin lines from the VP debate were quoted exactly, as well as lines from the presidential candidates themselves.

What does it mean that the comedy shows are so closely aligned with the world of politics (including people getting their news from the Daily Show)? The ratings for the SNL episodes about the election were huge- on tv and on the internet. What does it mean that CNN and other cable news channels were covering--and apparently supporting--this type of comedic politics? Is comedy a legitimate source of political insights, or is it an insufficient or biased form of agenda-setting?

It's one thing for a comedy show to openly skewer the politicians, and another thing when the strait-laced cable news takes a side- even if done tacitly. Or is it all just done in fun?

"The greatest show TV has seen in years"

James Poniewozik writing about new election night technologies:
"Election night captured in miniature the brilliance and ridiculousness of election 2008 in the media. NBC painted an electoral map on New York City's Rockefeller Center skating rink and stood its hosts in front of enough virtual Greek columns to stage a hundred Obama rallies; 3-D graphics sprouted out of studio floors and hung in the air; and CNN unveiled the most amazing and goofy innovation, 3-D projections of studio guests speaking to the network's anchors like Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan for help in Star Wars."

SNL spoofs the giant digital election maps:


Entertained yet? Kind of makes you long for the simple days of Tim Russert and his whiteboard.

"Awash in data, if not necessarily in knowledge"

Much has been written about the 24-hour news cycle, and how it dilutes pertinent stories with less important but flashier stories. James Poniewozik, a writer for Time Magazine, recently wrote about the 24 minute news cycle. In other words, he believes that with cable and online outlets, any little thing can be made into news, to help fill the time and to satiate the the voracious appetites of some news consumers.

The phenomenon he describes is that the coverage we see is actually "fixations and miniscandals whipped up in the unsleeping" media. He believes that potential stories "percolate" in blogs and tabloids until the mainstream press finally pick them up to join in the conversation and in the process "soil" their white gloves.

Poniewozik illustrated his point with the recent election coverage as an example. He believes it was just a succession of these miniscandals, hyped because "the media run so fast while politics moves so slow."

Example 1: "While Hillary Clinton and Obama won their expected states with the precision of a German train schedule, the 24-minute news cycle played each victory as: Comeback! Counter-comeback! Counter-counter-comeback!"

Example 2: "The campaigns, meanwhile, also learned to use new media to keep the news monster appeased. Web ads were quick, cheap and explosive--the more outrageous, the more likely to get embedded on blogs and played for free on the news."

In the end, Poniewozik believes that the mainstream press has more competition for scoops and thus for audiences (from blogs, YouTube, etc), so they learned how to "put on a show," turning the 2008 election into the "biggest pop culture event of the year."

Unfair and Unbalanced

Some news stations are unbiased. Some profess to be unbiased and are not. Some however, cannot even claim to be unbiased. This interview would suggest that WFTV in Florida falls into the third category. See for yourself.

Interview with Prof Annerio

I recently had the opportunity to talk about media literacy with Maggie Annerino, professor of communications at Grand Valley State University. Her insights into the effects of the 24 hour television news on our society as a whole were enlightening and eye-opening.

One of the topics we discussed was the role of the around-the-clock cable news channels. Professor Annerino believes they talk too much. Although they do perform the important function of informing us, they often over-inform, or inform us of things that are not actually important. Thus when there is not enough news, they have to stretch for material to fill the time. An example she provided is that in the days leading up to each of the presidential debates, the commentators quickly exhausted any relevant topic, which inevitably leads into abundant speculation. Theorizing and analyzing superficial or unimportant topics takes over when legitimate subjects get tired. While the news does perform a vital role in our society by informing us, they do not do so perfectly when they present irrelevant issues on the same level as a genuinely important subject.

The news media serve many crucial functions in our society, but they are not without their drawbacks. As Professor Annerino pointed out, when there is nothing important enough to report, it's not necessarily good to just fill the time for the sake of filling it; in other words, sometimes no news is good news.

The Daily Show: a good source of news?

According to a 2004 Pew Foundation study, from 2000 to 2004, the percentage of people under age 30 who received much of their information from comedy news shows rose from 9% to 21%.

Being on a college campus, I often hear people say that they get their news from shows like The Daily Show. The students seem to feel that information from the entertainment world better reflects their views and tastes than the traditional journalism. In response, I also hear a lot of dismissive comments about the show’s legitimacy or reliability.


So what’s wrong with getting information from The Daily Show? Obviously no one source should be the sole provider of a person’s information, but why exactly is the The Daily Show seen as inferior to other news sources? Should it be used by information-seekers?

Food for thought: In 2004, Comedy Central had more hours of coverage of both party’s conventions than ABC, CBS, and NBC combined.

Thought # 2: All media sources have some degree of bias, but the difference is that most tout themselves as neutral; The Daily Show is open about their motivations. The viewer has to engage her mind to separate the facts from the farce. The network news is presented as serious and unbiased, so the viewer merely has to sit back and absorb. If anything, The Daily Show encourages greater engagement in the information gathering process because the viewer has to be actively filtering and evaluating what’s presented.

Final thought: According to Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, The Daily Show consistently focuses attention on issues badly covered through the mainstream media, ensuring that they register on the radar…” (p226). So the network news decides what’s news-worthy based on what’s dramatic enough to grab attention; The Daily Show can report on anything—including things that are important but not sensational—and get viewers by satirizing it. Comedy shows are not bound by finding dramatic stories because they can take any important-but-boring story and make it interesting.

A lot of people feel comfortable talking with others about popular culture and the entertainment world, but not as many people feel qualified to talk about politics. The Daily Show frames political issues in a way that encourages greater participation, and that’s something that can only bolster a democratic society.

Rupert Murdoch, Media Mogul

For all of the talk of Fox News being biased or pushing a conservative agenda, how can you find out if Rupert Murdoch is trying to shape the public's perceptions? You could ask him.



He was rated last year as number two (behind only Steve Jobs) on Fortune's 25 most powerful people in business for his worldwide influence via News Corp. He has a powerful influence most facets of the media industry.
If you don't like what he has to say, you'll have to do more than just avoid Fox News Channel. You couldn't watch The National Geographic Channel or local baseball games. No more Simpsons or American Idol either. And some movies would be out too-- Borat and Fight Club, Garfield, Juno, Marley & Me (book and movie). No to HarperCollins-owned books by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Shel Silverstein. No to The Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones. And now, even no to MySpace.
And although he's 77, with total worldwide assets of $62 billion, don't count on him slowing down any time soon.

Are moles and pins really the biggest issues?

I am continually amazed at the 'stories' that the media choose to cover; so often the topics are not relevant to peoples' lives, and aren't by any stretch constructive information. This is especially true now with the presidential race making up so much of the coverage.

Example 1: How many hours of coverage were devoted to Barack Obama NOT wearing a flag pin at a certain photo-op? His choice of lapel adornment doesn't affect his ability to be president, nor do I believe it reflects a secret inner aversion to America. But the pundits had air time to fill, so away they spun.

Example 2: John McCain can't be president because he's dying of skin cancer. Or at least that seems to be the message sent by the mainstream media back in July when he had a mole removed. Andrew Romano blogged about this 'event' being blown out of proportion, citing a Washington Post item that wondered "whether the 'mole like' skin has any long term ramifications on the campaign." How could it possibly?
Unless he's dying.

Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine, wrote this week about the media's roll in deciding what's talked about. "The 24/7 news cycle--cable television, the Internet, the blogosphere--has the effect of trivializing big stories and making big stories out of trivial ones." So in the end, instead of engaging in issues like America's presence in Iraq or how to stop the mortgage meltdown, we're hearing about how a man is unfit for the presidency because he forgot to put on his flag pin.
A pin that was probably made in China anyway.

Now there's a cable news-worthy story.

"Taking aim" at hurricane coverage

Watching the cable news coverage of Hurricane Ike the past few days, I've been amazed anew at how sensational it all is. I was with my Mom this weekend and she is a voracious televised news consumer. All of the news channels are programmed into the remote under 'favorites' so she can scroll through more easily. Needless to say I saw A LOT of the coverage and from different stations. 

The Weather Channel was calling in all of their 'experts' and switting between their four meteorologist reporting from Texas. Then, what all the headline writers were waiting for happened: CNN.com reports that one person drowned off the coast of Texas, and Ike officially became a "deadly" hurricane. Then when the National Weather Service said that some families in some parts of Texas would face "certain death" if they didn't evacuate, several of the news stations seized on that. More than one made it their banner on the bottom of the screen, so that even if you were flicking by the channels casually, you couldn't miss the word "death" jumping out at you. 

I noticed that the headline writers had a tendency to personify the hurricane, a trend that started around the time of WWII when hurricanes were first being named. Headlines on the channels said things like 'Ike takes aim at...' or 'threatens', or USA Today said Ike was "marching" inward. Other sources reported on Ike's 'punches' and his 'wrath'. Our culture likes everything to be a narrative, and every good story needs a good villain. Personifying a hurricane enables you to give it motivations and intentions, and it certainly makes it more dramatic. Having a storm that 'targets' Texas is much more interesting than one that is merely headed that direction.

The news channels try to write the most ominous headlines to grab your attention when you flick by, and then once you choose their station, they pack their crawl full of sensational phrases and comments, and show you their reporters stationed in the heart of the storm braving the elements. As my mom flipped through her favorites on the remote, it seemed to be a competition as to which channel could be the most dramatic and exciting. If it seemed over-the-top, it's because the stations know how to get our attention: we watch drama. We stop on the channel whose headline includes Ike 'slamming,' 'ravaging,' destroying,' or 'wreaking devastation,' and whose footage includes collapsed buildings and a dumpster floating down the street (Weather Channel, for the record). The more extreme or bizarre, the more we watch. 

As MSNBC switches between news stories and their hurricane graphic sweeps across the screen (accompanied by a whooshing sound), I can't help but think that I'll miss my new friend Ike, whom I've come to know so well recently. Maybe if we're lucky, another deadly hurricane will be born, to take aim at us and wreak some devastation. That would make for compelling television.

“We criticize yet we consume"

“Gallup Poll (Jones, 2004) reported that
54% of Americans had even a ‘fair amount of trust and confidence in the media’
49% think media news organizations are ‘highly professional’
39% think the media are ‘moral’


Media consumption is a two way street. The media can produce all the irrelevant or inaccurate content they want, but we can’t lay the blame entirely on them if we keep watching. If a cable news channel airs a story about Celebrity X and it gets good ratings, then we are in effect giving them permission—even encouragement—to keep more similar stories coming. Is it the fault of the news stations as the suppliers? Yes, to a large degree. But we are also culpable because our choices create the demand.

Many people counted in the 54% of Americans who don’t even have a “fair amount of trust and confidence in the media” are still media consumers. I would bet most of the people polled who don’t trust the media are not worried about they themselves being corrupted by the media. This appears to be an instance of the “third-person” effect Stanley Baran writes about in Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture.

Baran says that we “disregard media’s power through the third-person effect—the common attitude that others are influenced by media messages but that we are not. That is, we are media literate enough to understand the influence of mass communication on the attitudes, behaviors, and values of others, but not self-aware or honest enough to see its influence on our lives." (p30) Most people seem to be wary of the morality of the news, but don’t see how it affects their own morality.

If we keep seeing stories about Muslim extremists, that may affect our attitudes towards Muslims in general, albeit slowly and subtly. If you ask someone, they’ll probably say that they know not all Muslims are terrorists, but who can say if their opinions haven’t been subconsciously affected by what they’ve seen on TV. So while people may decry the media as morally derisive, until we admit that it may be affecting ourselves as well, and start altering our behavior accordingly, we’ll continue to give tacit approval to the news media.

By continuing to watch, we’re saying “we like this, give us more”. If we continue to “criticize yet consume” we are no better than political dissenters who don’t vote. It’s the basic economic principle of supply and demand; our end of the bargain is simple enough: decrease demand. Turn the channel. Or turn the TV off. I have a “fair amount of confidence” that that would send the message.